Pascal’s Wager: What’s Really at Stake? Thesis: Because Pascal’s Wager is a gamble, it not only puts one’s personal beliefs at risk but it also endangers individual ethics. Pascal’s Wager treats belief in God as a bet that may be won or lost. In other words believing in God is a rational belief because if God exists one receives salvation. However, if God exists and one does not believe he/she will receive eternal punishment.
Although Job is described by Satan as “You will find no one like him on earth, a man of blameless and upright life, who fears God and sets his face against wrongdoing.” (p.511), he is still reluctant to believe that Job will remain sinless “in the face of disaster”, and suggests they eradicate his material possessions, including his children, to test his faith. Through a great amount of self control and confidence in God, Job remains calm and sin-free. Satan then manipulates God into allowing another set of tests in which Job himself is physically harmed by ragingly painful sores, but once again Job maintained strong and faithful, without cursing once. The book then centers on Job’s interpretation of God’s actions. He curses the day of his birth as well as the night of his conception, stating “Why is life given to those who find it so bitter?” (p.512).
I have come to understand that when change is forced upon, it may be detrimental’ leading to conflict and struggle to remain true to ourselves. This is seen the texts studied thus far. In ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ by Oscar Wilde, ‘Echo and Narcissus’ by Ovid and ‘The Rabbits’ by Shaun Tan characters are challenged by forceful influences or lack self-awareness which leads them to a unfortunate pathway to self-destruction. Resisting the nature the change can have a detrimental effect to our journey to personal growth. Other may take advantage of one’s naivety and innocence and take the opportunity to negatively influence them for their own satisfaction.
Hamlet also expresses the possibilities that the ghost could have been the devil. Although hamlet gets upset with himself he believes that the play he arranged would display Claudius’ guilt and then he will know for sure he killed his father. This reveals to the audience that Hamlet is a procrastinator and he is a coward. In Hamlet’s fifth soliloquy he contemplates the idea of suicide, he suggests that maybe the only reason we choose life is because we know so little about death other than it Is final. After contemplation Hamlet decides not to take his own life.
The death of one’s father and a ghostly visitation thereafter are events that would challenge the sanity of anyone. The circumstances of King Hamlet’s death render it especially traumatic. The late King seemed to be an idol to his son; Hamlet looked up to him and aspired to have the same qualities. Hamlet doesn't like King Claudius and sees him as a swindling usurper who has stolen not only the dead King’s throne, but Hamlet’s as well(2.4). Hamlet shows Gertrude that she has lowered her standards by marrying Claudius, When he refers to old Hamlet as, “A combination and a form indeed / Where every god did seem to set his seal” (3.4.55-61).
Hamlet assumes these actions from the actor because these are the actions that Hamlet would use to express his feelings. Hamlet then feels that he is not courageous enough to bravely kill Claudius and all he can do is mope. He puts himself at the peak of frustration since he has not accomplished anything yet and begins to doubt his ability to for revenge and calls himself a coward. He says he should have killed Claudius a long time ago. He then comes up with a plan to have the actors put on a play that is similar to the Murder of King Hamlet.
Shakespeare incorporated the theme of madness to serve a motive for Hamlet in order to deceive others. Hamlet planned everything from what he was doing to what he was going to do. Hamlet did in fact pretend to be mad, just so he could follow through on his plan to avenge his father’s death. He acted like he was mad because he did not want to directly kill Claudius, because he wanted to make him suffer. Hamlet also knew that he could not tell anyone that Claudius has murdered his father or that he had seen the ghost of his father because no one would believe him.
He generalized them into a stereotype based on their double-sided nature of appearance vs. reality. Christianity brought about the downfall of men, as they feared the consequences of their sins in the after-life. Hamlet is stuck in a quandary between his encoded belief that he is straight, and his sincere feelings of scorn for females and affection of males. Hamlet is reluctant to kill his uncle, because he is a man and as much as he wants to kill him, he is only emotionally at liberty to attack Gertrude, a female. Societies expectation created “madness” and prevented the pursuit happiness as there was no freedom of individuality.
Prince Hamlet seems keen to avenge his father’s death, but throughout the narrative we see Hamlet hesitate to kill Claudius, he may be finding it hard as Claudius is the King and also a relative. The Ghost says he’s going to suffer in Purgatory until Prince Hamlet avenges his death by killing Claudius, as the way he died he didn’t have a chance to confess his sins, so he would go to heaven. “Doomed for a certain
He feels shamed for having broken his code of honor with Abigail, saying “Abby, I may think of you softly from time to time, but I will cut off my hand before I ever reach for you again.” This shows that he doesn’t want to go through what he did with Abigail ever again. At the end of Act IV, he rips up his confession because he doesn’t want his name being used to sway others. He says “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies!